Ashes to Ashes
by Emi1988
Summary: AU Oliver realizes there are things he never knew before he met Percy and learns the defination of the Five Stages of Death. PO, character torturedeath, OOCness, ANGST


****

Disclaimer: _I own nothing!_ Do you understand? _NOTHING!_

****

Warnings: OOCness, character death, mentions of slash (but nothing happens), character torture and ANGST!!!

I never knew half the things I do now before I met him, my soul mate, my angel, my pillar of strength without which I was sure my world would crumble. If I had never touched those soft, tightly wound curls of deep crimson red I may not have been able to see him smile. If I had never looked into those sky blue eyes while they laughed at some joke someone made, I would have never known true happiness. If I had never kissed those soft, tender lips that day, tasted the cinnamon flavor of the man who stole my heart before even I knew, I would have never known true love. But I was fool. I had though that none of these things could be taken away from me, so I took them for granted and now I am paying the price.

I had never known loneliness before I met my angel either, the loneliness of come home to our flat alone because I had been told there was a raid that day at the ministry and he was captured, taken prisoner by the Dark Lord's army. For even long years I knew this loneliness, this emptiness inside that just wouldn't ease, as I prayed every night to God that he would sent my angel back to me. The cruel bastard never did; He only returned to me the shell of the man I had loved.

I never knew pain before I saw what had been done to him, saw the way he had suffered and still suffered, with my own two eyes. The way his painfully thin body struggled for every wheezing breath while his mangled legs were amputated and his broken arms were reset without painkillers, for the doctors feared such a strong drug would kill him rather than save him, made my very soul cringe. His broken cries of agony torn from a throat already hoarse from screaming were more than enough to shatter my heart and almost wish that my handsome angel had just died in that camp…then perhaps he wouldn't know this pain anymore. Perhaps he wouldn't have to live with the memories I knew would haunt him until his body naturally let his broken spirit free.

I never knew fear until I saw it in his eyes that day, the day we found him in that cage, chained and shivering in the cold, watching us like a frightened rabbit. There was such terror in those orbs of blue that had once help happiness and mirth, such complete and utter terror of our very presence that I was worried he was going to hurt himself just to try and escape us. Those eyes alone spoke of the endless hours of mindless abuse and indescribable pain he had known for seven years. Within that fear, I saw the plea for mercy he would never voice, a plea that was always uttered in vain beneath his breath as his life was taken from him a bit more every day. A plea, I vowed, he would never have to utter again as long as there was breath in my body.

I never knew despair until I brought him home after the doctors declared him healthy enough to leave and watched him try to wheel himself out the front door, his legs having been amputated from the hips down and so basically leaving him with a torso, without being stared at. Some people pitied this poor creature, clearly still half starved, while others mocked him. Yet still others, the sick people, said he got what he deserved. It was these people, their words, that made what little confidence I had managed to rebuild in my once proud partner fade way, leaving him with nothing but despair and self loathing the likes of which only the suicidal would have. He never tried to kill himself around us in the hospital but, according to the psychiatrist, he tried several times in the prison and was severely punished for it.

It was then that I began my decent through the five stages as I watched him suffer. The five stages a human being goes through as they watch their soul mate fade away into nothingness. The five stages of death. My love had already gone through them when his soul was so violently torn from him but now, as his body dies, it is my turn to watch.

The first stage is one I lingered in for a long time. The Denial stage. For the longest time, I refused to believe that my beautiful lover was fading from me, that every night, as I held him close, his body grew colder and his breathing became more and more labored. I hated it when he would try to curl up against me in his sleep, shivering as if cold, and he would move as if to wrap his legs around mine, only, since they didn't exist, I felt nothing. I wanted so badly to wake up and find this all to be a cruel dream…if only.

The second stage wasn't one I lasted very long in. Anger. Oh sure, I was angry, but the bastards who had done this to him were already in the prisons, suffering their own sentences deemed fit by the law. I wanted so badly to break them, leave them in mangled piles of ooze like they had left my poor angel's legs but, alas, it was against the law to touch them now. Still, I remained angry at the men who, for all intents and purposes, murdered my beautiful lover.

The third stage, depression, was the one I lasted the longest in. I couldn't get over the thought of my lover leaving me, even if now all I really had was his shell. At least, with this shell, I could pretend he was there with me, smiling and laughing like he used to. Just the knowledge that someday soon I was going to be all alone in this world with no one to talk to, to hold close at night, hell to give every ounce of my love and know it is returned, it saddened me more than any thought ever had before. Just looking at him by day and seeing him struggling, knowing he was clinging to life by a thin thread that was slowly breaking, was enough to remind me of the fate that awaited me.

The fourth stage was bargaining, pleading with God to accept an exchange. I pleaded with him several times to give my angel his soul back and instead take mine. I asked Him to give him back his smile and laughter, to make those eyes come alive again just once more before I was forced to let him go but it was all for naught. My beautiful lover, now so gaunt and pale, wore a blank expression, his empty eyes haunted by memories that would never fade as long as he still bore the marks of their touch.

The fifth stage was that of acceptance, that no matter what was happening, he was going to die and I was alright with that. I did not reach this stage until he was on his death bed less than six months after his release from the prisons, the infection in the remaining wound of his leg having finally managed to get too strong for his body to fight off. It was then and only then that I was able to let him go and going his brethren in the Heavens.

There was no hospital bed, no machines surrounding him; he had told me he wanted to die at home, with me as his only witness to call the time of death for his family. I sat by his bedside, holding his thin hand as he instinctively fought for life a little while longer. I didn't need a heart monitor to tell me when he had passed, I could see his chest stilling as his breathing stopped and as I leaned over to listen, his beating heart had stopped its futile struggle as well. "Time of death," I whispered, more for myself as I wrote it down on the death certificate the doctor had handed me when I told him of his wishes, already signed by the doctor, that just required the time and the date. "8:42 p.m."

The funeral, a few days later, was not an elaborate one. It was hardly a funeral at all. All that was done was a small cheap wooden casket with his body inside was left open as a priest said some final words then, as I watched, they moved him from the coffin and put him on a conveyer belt, sending him into the oven to be burned. His ashes were given to me in a beautiful urn befitting an innocent victim of a hateful war and on the urn was the last picture taken of him before he was captured and sent to the camps, along with his name, dates of birth and death and, of course, a phrase that he had said that seemed to fit him.

_Percival Ignatius Weasley_

1983 - 2007

"Never let it be said that I don't

do enough for my country for it is

my country that seems to refuse

to do enough for me.'"

****

ANGSTY huh? What do you think? Nice huh? READ AND REVIEW!


End file.
